Customer Reviews

Only With Passion: Figure Skating's Most Winning Champion on Competition and Life

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Always projected as a fascinating ice princess, I was hoping for something more interesting. Very little in terms of an intimate portrait and advice on becoming a champion skater.

Christine Brennan did a better job capturing intimate glimpses of Witt in a few pages in "Inside Edge" compared to this entire book. I wanted to read more about growing up in GDR, how her friendship with Roz Summers developed, the controversy of the government spying on her, more biographical information about HER and her skating. The impression given is that she was a machine told what to do and she did it - including this book. True skate fans, skip this one.

I am a big figure skating fan. I have read every skating book out there.

I thought Katarina's story would be interesting. While not my favorite skater, her background would certainly be worth the read.

I was wrong. For one thing, this book seems to be set up in a way where Katarina is giving advice to a fictious up and coming skating star. Never quite sure if this girl actually exists or not.

Also, this book is preachy and....boring, boring, boring.

Where are the great skating stories, the background info on skating in Germany?

What about Katarina's fears and thoughts on life in general.

None of this in this book.

Skate right by this one.

This book contains the musings of Olympian figure skater, Katerina Witt, who has won gold medals in two consecutive Olympics, four world championships, and eight national championships. She ruminates on the rigors of athletic competition and on the life lessons she has learned along the way. Turning forty years old this December, she offers some fairly general advice to the young on what it takes to be a top athlete. She does so from the perspective of what she has discovered in her own quest to be the best.

There is very little that is truly intimate about this book, as it is, for the most part, quite banal, although Ms. Witt does offer some relatively minor revelations about her life. Still, the tone throughout the book remains remote and dispassionate, notwithstanding the title of the book. There is some commentary about other figure skating greats but nothing the least bit controversial or eyebrow raising. It is clear that Ms. Witt reserves her passion for the ice, as there is none infused in this somewhat tepid book. Only those who are rabid fans of figure skating will get a modicum of enjoyment from this book.

Throughout the 1980s and early '90s, East German Katarina Witt dominated the world of ladies' skating. In her autobiography, Witt describes what skating has meant to her, as she details a coming-of-age story being "told" to a young up-and-coming skater, Jasmine.

The book is a fast read, and while it is mildly interesting, it is also very repetitive. Katarina skates past her childhood in the GDR, briefly mentioning her parents, and glosses over the competitions she has had in her life as well. There is virtually nothing about her Olympic bids in Sarajevo, Calgary, and Lillehammer, and little is mentioned of her famous rivalry with American Debi Thomas. Instead, the book focuses on advice Witt has for young skaters - namely, stay true to your dreams and don't give up.

When compared with what is perhaps skating's most famous memoir, "My Sergei" by Katia Gordeeva, this book falls far short. There is virtually no emotion, and the character Katarina is supposedly telling the story to may or may not exist (it's not made clear whether she is real or not). Little insight is offered into the world of skating, either at the amateur level or professional (Katarina doesn't talk about her years on Stars on Ice at all).

Overall, this book is decent, but by no means great. It is emotionless, and mildly intriguing, if more for its outrageous title than anything else. Looking for a great skating book? Try "My Sergei" instead.

I read over this book in the waiting room of my Dentist's office. All in all I think this book is a good guide for parents of aspiring skaters. On a personal note one has to really ask if it is worth sacrificing a childhood for a medal?. These skaters have to train relentlessly for years.In the process they miss out so much of childhood which when lost can never be replaced. I have no children of my own but given what I saw during the whole Lillehammer Nancy Kerrigan / Tonya Harding scandal someone needs to watch over these young athletes so they do not lose contact with reality. I wish Ms. Witt had the courage to write more about her life in the former East German sports machine as it is especially relevant today when we read about athletes and doping scandals. I think Ms Witt like so many of the former Communist Bloc athletes were products of a system that treated them like racehorses to be bred and trained. Many had health problems in later life due to the strange performance enhancing drugs given them. Ms. Witt was hosting a TV show in Germany called "The OSTALGIE Show ". Ostalgie is term used by Germans as nostalgia for the good aspects of life under the old regime. I wonder if Ms. Witt has read "Faust's Gold: Inside the East German Doping Machine". The problem with nostalgia is no matter what the past is always better because one can be sentimental about the good and forget the evil.

I am not a skater but I am a great fan of Katarina Witt since my childhood..I have grown up with watching her skating programmes and when I was a little girl I was wearing my rollerblades at home and I was Katarina Witt:)collecting all the flowers -that my mum,grandfather,and other family members that I made them throw me flowers:))-but due to the lack of skating arenas I have never been able to start to skate seriously although I was very talented and willing but I always admired Katarina Witt.This book is really good for me to observe the mentality of the East German approach for sport and emposing being ambitious and tough to their sporters.I have read some comments regarding this book before ,some people say this book will not be a good example for young skaters in mean of nutrition but I want to say that in these years we were not as conscious as today regarding nutrition.Remember we were still watching the Cigarette Advertisements on TV.So the nutrition mentality has changed a lot in all over the world and Katarina just told her working conditions frankly .She did not give this as an example to be copied of..Besides today's teenagers and their trainers are so conscious that they will only take the parts that will be helpful to them from this book they are aware of what's good or what's bad..
On this book I reccomend to the readers that when you read for example Olympics part from the book ,it will be more fun to read the Olympic parts and after to watch Katarina's that show on youtube ..
Thanks a lot to AMAZON for providing this book !!
NIL

Tear your eyes away from the winter spectacle of the Turin Olympics and treat yourself to multiply talented skating superstar Katarine Witt's most intimate memories. She tells them all to a young girl whose name she kindly changes to "Jasmine," a young girl who comes to her in need of advice. Witt sees Jasmine as a version, perhaps, of her younger self, the self that grew up behind the Iron Curtain, indeed behind the Berlin Wall only to become a pawn of the feared Stasi. As Jasmine spends a week luxuriating in the presence of the adored Katarina, she asks her mentor a series of penetrating, even probing questions and these questions, together with the Delphic replies Katarina makes in response, form the backbone of this wise, witty and winning little book. Some may say, it feels like only about 30,000 words, far too short for a book costing $23.50, but i say, it was just the right length.

Jasmine asks about dating, and of course Katarina, as one of the most beautiful women in competitive sports, or indeed on Planet Earth, has plenty to say about it. Did you know the she once dated East German rock singer Ingo? In fact he was her first serious boyfriend; they met at a "youth festival" and fell madly in love. Those European "youth festivals" sound like fun. If I'm correct, that is where ABBA met each other a bit further north! Anyhow the government soon separated the young lovers. Jasmine then asks Katarina if it is true she once dated "McGyver"! Yes, she uses the name McGyver, almost as if she could not remember the actor's name who played him! (Richard Dean Anderson.) Instead of getting huffy, Katarina smiles sadly and reflects on how neither she nor Anderson were willing to move to the other's continent and that killed the romance, which however was quite "intense." What's little known is that McGyver himself (RDA as his fans call him) isn't a bad skater himself! In love, Witt advises,"if you want to become really serious, to have the relationship work, then somebody has to play second violin." Doesn't she sound charming and old world, where we in California might say, "second fiddle"?

Katarina also discusses her famous nude appearance in PLAYBOY. And she puts it in context, the context of the way that in Europe, particularly her country, nudity is natural. Until she was sixteen she walked around topless everywhere. Reading her life this way, you realize that an appearance in PLAYBOY was just like breathing in and breathing out for Katarina Witt. Ahe is magnificent, the Princess Caroline of Monaco of the ice world. Long may she reign, in the USA at any rate, for she admits that in the US audiences are warm and love an old skater, whereas in Europe the attitude is much more, you're old, get off the ice. In America, she says, she was shocked to see Dorothy Hamill still feted and hailed and worshipped by audiences even in her late forties! Wouldn't happen in East Germany, Hamill would be relegated to cooking strudel for the younger players.

I found this book to be a fascinating look into the life of a remarkably strong and independent woman. It isn't gossipy, but it is honest and unapologetic about what it was like to grow up as an elite athlete in East Germany and to have to compete with the expectations of a country on your shoulders. The format, in which Witt gives advice to a young skater who is going through some of the same things Witt went through as a teenager, is unusual, but it worked for me. Witt can be funny, observant, and revealing about her own insecurities and failures in love. But she is a strong woman who seldom second guesses herself, and is a pretty amazing role model for young women athletes today.

A book in English from this legendary skater whose celebrity transcends her sport is long overdue, and this one is a most welcome treat. While not strictly autobiographical, it feels like an extended, intimate conversation, and Witt is remarkably candid about her life experiences and opinions. Swift ably captures his co-author's voice, as he has done to great effect in his other works. This is a thoroughly pleasurable read for the skating fan, and should not be missed by anyone who admires strong, independent women.

I wonder why Katarina stirs clear about her real life and her close involvement with the Stasi, and how it ruined and destroyed people's lives, it would at least have made a more interesting read than this dull book.

Ho hum, it has been said that Ms. Witt was never a very naturally gifted figure skater, that even her wonderfully choreographed programs were never easy for her to do.

It's also rather odd that for such an unrepentant and strident communist to take advantage of all the opportunities western life has given her, but she doesn't seem in the least bit grateful. Everything is about her, her, her. Definitely NOT a good role model for young girls or women.